Generally, in a commercial electrostatographic reproduction or marking apparatus (such as copier/duplicators, printers, or the like), a latent image charge pattern is formed on a uniformly charged photoconductive or dielectric member. Pigmented marking particles (toner) are attracted to the latent image charge pattern to develop such image on the dielectric member. A receiver member, such as paper, is then brought into contact with the dielectric member and an electric field applied to transfer the marking particle developed image to the receiver member from the dielectric member. After transfer, the receiver member or paper bearing the transferred image is transported away from the dielectric member and the image if fixed or fused to the receiver member by heat and/or pressure to form a permanent reproduction thereon. This permanently marked paper in some systems is then passed to a finishing station where the papers are stacked and stapled or compiled into a book or binder. Proper paper handling in this type system becomes vital to proper functioning of these marking systems. With the advent of high speed electrostatic and other marking systems, printers can produce at a rate in excess of seven thousand copies per hour. Copies in some systems are each fed to the finishing station at a rate of 0.5 seconds per sheet providing a 0.5 second time between copies. If the stapler is functioning at a slower rate, papers or copies in the paper feed path need to be attended to in order to prevent paper jams and other system breakdowns.
Methods used to control this problem include stopping the feed system until the stapler (or other finisher) catches up to the backlog of papers or by buffering the sheets. “Buffering” includes diverting the excess backlogged sheets on the main paper path to some other detour paper path to be held in this detour and to be fed back into the main paper path when the excess or backlog papers can be properly handled by the stapler or binder at the compiler or finishing station. Thus, a production loss in many finishing devices is attributed to a skipped pitch (or pitches) required to allow the stapler function and a set ejection out of the staple head function to occur. This above noted prior art buffering method utilizes a long paper path in which sheets can be accelerated and timed such that a sufficient gap can be produced to allow time for these functions. This is costly and complex. In addition, in today's technology, copier or printer space is at a premium and their structures are compact, leaving very little extra space for a long detour paper path. Sheets and mechanisms are often moved at velocities and accelerations that are faster than desired. Again, this can lead to higher jam rates and more frequent hardware failure rates which negatively impact customer-user satisfaction. There is a need for a paper handling system that will not require stopping the system or using a space occupying long paper path. The prior art systems using long paper auxiliary or detour path are time consuming, take up valuable space, are costly, not very reliable and require a separate motor.